Creativity is not so much a boundless well, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of elements for your creative endeavor. Eventually you've eaten your fill, and it's time to digest and then make something. But at some point, it will be time to return to the restaurant.

Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind. Self changes, and you follow.

I was forgetting that an artist also just stares at a piece of paper or canvas all day. It somehow never occurred to me to connect these two diverse creative modes.

Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire.

Neither sugar nor salt tastes particularly good by itself. Each is at its best when used to season other things. Love is the same way. Use it to "season" people.

True balm [of fantasy] takes away the painful irritation of life and simply heals, allowing one to begin anew. And that is what fantasy can do for us.

It is right here, all of it, here for the taking, right before our eyes - happiness, fulfillment, hope, peace, justice. And most of all, there is truth, ordinary and simple, just sitting there to be plucked, if only we get our lazy rear ends off the pillow of complacency. But first, we need to open our eyes to this banal fact. And for that we need a periodic bit of shakeup in the form of an infusion of wonder - fantastic literature.